Sir Trevor Nunn

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and three, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:23

My Costaway this week is a man of the theatre. He's been at the top of the British drama tree for thirty-five years, ever since he was asked to become the artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company at the age of twenty-eight. His productions of the classics are legendary, but he's enjoyed huge success in the commercial world too. He's equally at home with Cats, Les Miserable and Anything Goes as he is with Othello and the Winterstale.

Presenter0:46

There may be theatre in every fibre of his body, but there's none in his family background. He's the son of a working-class cabinet maker from Ipswich, who was first set on his career path by a schoolteacher who encouraged his ambitions. To be a director, he says, is to be a jack of all trades, part teacher, part psychiatrist, surrogate father, friend, and dictator, because it's hopeless to compromise. Currently the boss of the National Theatre, he is Sir Trevor Nunn. You're also a jack of all styles, Trevor, because of course as well as doing theatre and musical theatre you've directed opera as well, so it's kind of Mozart to Lloyd Webber and Cole Porter to Chekhov. It's a great mix if you can mix it, and you obviously have. You don't you're not hung up on this highbrow, lowbrow argument, are you?

Sir Trevor Nunn1:32

I've never seen the problem. I've never seen any distinction. They're all different strands of the same rope. I don't have any problem about saying a classical theatre company should be working on a Shakespeare text and then the following week working on one of the great works of the American musical theatre.

Presenter1:49

As long as it's good en entertainment and people are coming across the doorstep and enjoying it.

Sir Trevor Nunn1:53

No, I've never s seen the distinction, but I suppose that's partly to do with my

Sir Trevor Nunn1:58

upbringing because I didn't begin with uh any sense of the hybra. My first experiences of theatre and entertainment were via

Sir Trevor Nunn2:09

The radio and then a sort of music hall and pantomime. The most exciting experience I'd had to date was being in a a small theatre in my hometown of Ipswich, called The Hippodrome, and hearing for the first time a small pit orchestra tuning up. I recall to this day a sense of almost choking excitement that something was about to happen. And indeed, when that small pit orchestra began to play together, it was, well, it was a life-changing moment.

Speaker 42:13

Hmm.

Presenter2:42

How old were you then?

Sir Trevor Nunn2:43

I was nine. I'd only gone to the Hippodrome Theatre to see that.

Sir Trevor Nunn2:48

performance because my sister, who was a couple of years older than me, had won a colouring competition and the prize was to go to the local theater where they did the pantomimes.

Presenter2:59

So it was it was a kind of bit of luck, really. And and looking at your life, there's an unpredictability about it. For example, you know, you had you made a huge financial success because you happened to write the lyrics to memory for cats. I mean, and it was an accident.

Sir Trevor Nunn3:16

It was entirely an accident. I was truly delighted to be approached by Andrew Lloyd Webber to be involved with the cats project, because, curiously, I knew the collected works of T.S. Eliot pretty well. I had studied them at university. And therefore, when he said that he wanted to make a work out of the children's poems, I was intrigued. And then we came across this fragment about a cat called Grizabella. This little poem clearly had a sense of mortality, of how life changes, of how this cat was once revered and idolised as something glamorous and was now a pariah. So it became vital to include that poem. Time was ticking away, and in absolute desperation, I locked myself away one weekend, wrote a lyric. I showed it to Andrew at the end of that weekend. And he said, let's go with it. It was never in my mind that what I was creating or what I had written was a pop lyric. It was an enormous surprise.

Presenter4:25

And it was

Sir Trevor Nunn4:25

Yeah, I think it's a good idea.

Presenter4:25

My mother.

Presenter4:27

The point really is that that it was just unpredictable. It might never have happened, but it was life-changing.

Sir Trevor Nunn4:27

Is this

Sir Trevor Nunn4:31

But I have

Sir Trevor Nunn4:33

It was entirely life-changing and equally entirely unpredictable, and I was the lyricist of a worldwide number one hit.

Presenter4:41

I'm quite sure you're not going to go to your desert island without it, but it's not the first one you want to play, what is?

Sir Trevor Nunn4:47

My first record is a Brahms sonata for

Sir Trevor Nunn4:53

piano and viola. I adored the music of Brahms.

Sir Trevor Nunn4:58

He was revolutionary, particularly in his chamber music.

Presenter5:59

The opening of branze sonata in F minor for viola, played by Pinker Zuckerman and Daniel Barrenboim. Take us back then, Trevor Nunn, to wartime Ipswich. You were born in, what, nineteen forty? Describe the family home to me.

Sir Trevor Nunn6:11

It was a two up, two down house. It was a working class family background. I I didn't think of it in those days as a as a working class or or any class. It was extremely happy background. We had no resources of of any kind.

Presenter6:26

What did your father do?

Sir Trevor Nunn6:28

My father was a cabinet maker. Uh he worked ve very hard. He smelt of um glue and sawdust. That's w one of the abiding sensory memories that I have.

Presenter6:39

What about your mother?

Sir Trevor Nunn6:41

In those days the task of the wife was to be the mother and the housewife and to look after the home. But of course it meant that there was very little money to spend on anything, so the idea of going to school where a uniform had to be provided was a problem.

Presenter6:59

So when you passed the eleven plus it was a bit of a problem for the family.

Sir Trevor Nunn7:02

Um

Presenter7:03

No shiny new satchel for Trevor.

Sir Trevor Nunn7:04

Uh

Sir Trevor Nunn7:05

Yeah, I mean it was I think it was a matter of tremendous excitement that I should have passed that test to go to the grammar school. Very soon after I got there I met a man who was completely inspirational. He taught me English language and literature.

Sir Trevor Nunn7:26

It's called Peter Hewitt. And then

Sir Trevor Nunn7:29

Surprise, surprise, he was the person responsible for putting on the school plays. And um so I had an idolatry for him and of course I wanted to emulate him in many ways.

Presenter7:36

It is

Presenter7:41

There is an element of Eliza Doolittle to your story in the way that you tell it, and he he he's kind of your well, you're perhaps in your life your first Henry Higgins, Mr Hewitt, huh?

Sir Trevor Nunn7:51

He was an almighty influence. It wasn't just inspirational, it was practical too.

Sir Trevor Nunn7:57

And I got to the sixth form. He said he thought it was vital that I worked for an open scholarship examination to go either to Oxford or Cambridge. I had to go to see the headmaster to ask for a grant from the Poor Boys Fund to be able to take an open scholarship exam at Cambridge and had to stay there for a week and it was pretty expensive business. And the headmaster said he thought that my results today hadn't justified that expenditure. I came away from that interview and told Pete what had been said and he marched straight into the headmaster's office and I believe what he threatened to do was to resign if that decision wasn't overturned. And so the grant was made and I did take the exam and I did get a scholarship and I did go to Cambridge. So it was a completely life-changing moment. And if he hadn't have been passing in the corridor at that moment, quite possibly I would have given up and not gone on with it.

Presenter8:54

Good.

Presenter8:58

Record number two.

Sir Trevor Nunn9:00

I want to hear one of Benjamin Britton's C interludes from Peter Grimes. They describe a Suffolk environment so wonderfully. So when I came to do Peter Grimes, the opera, I felt very, very

Sir Trevor Nunn9:16

close to the world that he was describing.

Presenter10:19

Dawn, the first interlude from Benjamin Britton's Peter Grimes played by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House conducted by Bernard Heitink. I still want to stay in your living room in in that two up, two down Trevor in Ipswich, because I I think the radio you've mentioned what was the centrepiece of of that room, wasn't it? What did you get from it? What did it give to you? How did it inspire you?

Sir Trevor Nunn10:43

Family m myth has it that when I was five I was saying I wanted to be an actor. I had never been anywhere near a theater, and therefore the idea of people becoming other people had reached me via the radio. It was the

Presenter10:50

Near

Sir Trevor Nunn10:59

unifying thing in the room. As as now people huddle round television sets. We actually did sit round and face the radio and listen to the radio. It was quite a big thing actually. It was a very big thing.

Presenter11:11

And it was quite a big thing, actually.

Presenter11:13

I mean physically

Sir Trevor Nunn11:14

Physically, it was the size of a small cocktail cabinet. I was endlessly fascinated by the magic of it. And of course, well.

Presenter11:22

Who who who who came out of it who fascinated you?

Sir Trevor Nunn11:26

Oh well as a as a kid of course I was uh passionate about Dick Barton special agent and and Paul Temple and the other.

Presenter11:34

And did you impersonate these people? You wanted to be an actor, really, first of all. Although you talked theatre, you thought you were on the stage, didn't you?

Sir Trevor Nunn11:35

Yeah.

Sir Trevor Nunn11:37

Yeah.

Sir Trevor Nunn11:40

Yes, I I I think I impersonated all of them.

Presenter11:43

But what about other than the radio and voices? Were there any books in this room, in this house?

Sir Trevor Nunn11:49

Very few books. There was a medical book. So where did you come across Shakespeare? Illustrated Bible. Well, I again I was uh I was very fortunate because uh my father's brother

Presenter11:52

So where did you come across Shakespeare?

Sir Trevor Nunn12:00

He lived in a more salubrious area and he got married and there were books in in their house and so um

Presenter12:07

He's got a posh, aren't he?

Sir Trevor Nunn12:09

Yes, when I was sort of eight and nine and ten, I really looked forward to going to their house because there was a bookshelf and there were books to be explored and one of the books was the collected works of Shakespeare. I started to read and then was precocious enough to say to everybody on one of these visits, you know, or sit down because I'm going to do this speech for you. But I think I was passionate about.

Presenter12:34

Yeah.

Sir Trevor Nunn12:37

Being an actor.

Presenter12:38

But Shakespeare obviously hit the spot early on. It's interesting. There was a kind of immediate fit there, yes?

Sir Trevor Nunn12:44

Seemed to be. Um by then I had an idea that if you wanted to be an actor, that's what actors did, and therefore I had to become proficient at this.

Presenter12:55

What happened to that book?

Sir Trevor Nunn12:58

Oh, I still have it. She realized that after four or five visits I seemed to live for it, and so she gave it to me.

Presenter13:05

She should have a name. Who was she, Auntie Watt?

Sir Trevor Nunn13:07

She was haunted Oris.

Presenter13:09

Auntie Doris. Record number three.

Sir Trevor Nunn13:11

Well my third record is from Gershwin's Pork and Bess. I did a production of Porky and Bess at Glimborn and it was one of the happiest experiences of my professional career.

Speaker 413:39

Uh

Presenter13:56

Bess, You Is My Woman Now, from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, sung by Wyllard White and Cynthia Heyman with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Simon Rattle. Wyllard White, whom you memorably cast as Othello, um the Shakespeare Othello in the middle of the city.

Sir Trevor Nunn14:09

I did. Well, I said to Wellard that you were born to play Othello, but you're never going to play it in the Opera House because Verdi, for whatever perverse reason we don't know, wrote it as a tenor. So if you want to play Othello, you're going to have to do it with words by William Shakespeare. And it was a big decision for Wellard. And he's a very good idea.

Presenter14:25

It's an unusual transition, that, isn't it?

Sir Trevor Nunn14:27

It's very unusual and it took a great deal of courage. But he was remarkable. We had a wonderful time rehearsing it. We did it at Stratford and I cast a young actress as Desdemona called Imogen Stubbs. So I remember the production with great affection because in addition to working with Wellard and Ian McCallan, I met the person who is now my wife. So it was a very good time.

Presenter14:50

Well

Presenter14:53

Meanwhile, back in Ipswich, I I'm interested again when you passed the eleven plus and you went to the grammar, Northgate Grammar, you've written about it or talked about it, uh saying you were joining the enemy. Now what's that all about?

Sir Trevor Nunn15:06

I remember elections in those days and the Conservative Party candidate would always come round in a car and we kids would chuck bits of turf and gravel at the car and the Labour candidate would come round on a bike and we all cheered our heads off and we didn't really know what either candidate was saying.

Presenter15:30

And did you have stuff chucked at you when you went to the grammar f because you came from the wrong side of the tracks?

Sir Trevor Nunn15:36

I I I I did on on a couple of occasions.

Sir Trevor Nunn15:40

Verbal abuse and sometimes a bit of bullying.

Presenter15:43

Because you didn't have the right uniform or

Sir Trevor Nunn15:46

Uh

Presenter15:46

Yeah.

Sir Trevor Nunn15:47

I suppose that was that that was why it happened. I don't know. Maybe by then I was an insufferable prick and I absolutely deserved it.

Presenter15:55

But I'm interested in your concept of yourself as an outsider, as it were, because when you went up on your scholarship to Cambridge, to Downing College.

Presenter16:04

You went up as a cockney.

Sir Trevor Nunn16:07

No, I didn't. I I I went off as an East Anglian. I had brick pronounced uh East Anglia, that's why I sort of talked like that. I I sort of switched to talking a bit yeah, a bit like I was talking s sl slightly London and uh you know, chucking it about a bit and and um it was it was sort of survival tactic.

Presenter16:26

Hm,'cause you've had uh I mean um some illustrious contemporaries, didn't you? From well, Ian McKellen of course, John Cleese, David Frost, Margaret Travel. McKellen has said since that he thought of you as little Trev, a kind of hunched figure with long unwashed hair. Is that is that the image of you? I mean he muttered about having had a skiffle band, or perhaps that's just what you looked like.

Sir Trevor Nunn16:33

John Cleese, David Frost, Margaret Gravel.

Sir Trevor Nunn16:38

A kind of hunched fit.

Sir Trevor Nunn16:43

But there's image.

Sir Trevor Nunn16:47

Yeah, I d I I I sang for money. Um I did the whole snake hips routine i i in front of an audience.

Presenter16:54

But not in front of F. R. Levis when you got to Cambridge. I gather you were one of the last students to sit at his feet. A great critic and

Sir Trevor Nunn17:01

Literally sat at his feet, yes, because he taught in a room where there was one big horsehair armchair, no other furniture, just coconut matting on the floor. And we we all sat around, leant against the wall and listened to him for hours. And there was something obsessional about the way that we followed his thought and hung upon his every word.

Presenter17:24

Make one number four.

Sir Trevor Nunn17:24

The next record I've I've chosen is um a record called Broken Hallelujah. It brings back to me the world of being on stage with a guitar, entertaining an audience and trying to draw them in as an individual performer.

Speaker 417:41

I heard there was a secret chord That David played and it pleased the Lord But you don't really care for music, do you?

Speaker 417:55

Well it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, The minor fall and the major lift The baffled King composing hallelujah Oh yeah.

Presenter18:08

Jeff Buckley singing Hallelujah. Well, if Mr. Hewitt at Northgate Grammar had been one incarnation of Henry Higgins in the life of Trevor Nunn, it has to be said that Peter Hall must go down in your history as another. He was running the Royal Shakespeare Company, as I understand it, and he came after you. You'd come out of Cambridge, you'd gone to the Belgrade in Coventry, and he kept coming saying, You've got to come and work for me. He had great faith, didn't he?

Sir Trevor Nunn18:33

Oh, he did. I was very fortunate that it was just fifteen miles away from Stratford-upon-Avon, and therefore when I started to do work at Coventry, it was very easy for people at Stratford just to make that journey and and see what was going on.

Presenter18:46

And see what

Presenter18:47

Which is what Peter did.

Sir Trevor Nunn18:48

And then Peter did come over, and I'd done a production of the Caucasian Short Circle. He spoke to me in the interval and then afterwards and said, you know, it really would be splendid if you would come over and join us, and I'd like to employ you as an assistant director. And I had the temerity of saying to him, I think I'll stay where I am because I'm being asked to do my own productions here, and I think I've got a huge amount to learn. And so I won't come to Stratford as an assistant. A year later, he came over again and said, What I think you should do is to join the RSC as the next associate director. And I mean, I was 24, 25, and it was beyond belief that he was saying that.

Presenter19:26

Uh

Sir Trevor Nunn19:31

But you did do that.

Speaker 419:31

But you did

Presenter19:44

You had a disastrous time, didn't you?

Sir Trevor Nunn19:46

I it was pretty disturbing.

Presenter19:47

Tell me about your disasters.

Sir Trevor Nunn19:49

Well the first thing that Peter entrusted me with was the idea of making a show in the manner of Oh, What a Lovely War, but about the general strike of 1926. And I I was very, very thrilled by the project, but I wasn't sufficiently practised in knowing how to bring all of those improvisatory elements together, and the the production got cancelled underneath me.

Presenter20:14

So it was a bumpy time. You had awful disasters. He had to stick with you. But what turned things around for you? What was the production which finally established your reputation?

Sir Trevor Nunn20:16

No for this

Sir Trevor Nunn20:23

Patient.

Presenter20:24

That's right.

Sir Trevor Nunn20:24

Well, um, Peter said, look.

Sir Trevor Nunn20:28

I want to give you a a production at Stratford, but I I can't afford it. You you can only have half a budget. I mean you can have a budget for costumes, but you're going to have to use uh an already existing set design.

Sir Trevor Nunn20:41

I had very little thinking time, but I didn't need it because I'd come across this very rare text called The Revengers' Tragedy. And I knew that it hadn't had a professional production for hundreds of years. But most of the leading actors in the company passed, and therefore I had to cast it with people who were very, very hungry for opportunity, but who weren't thought of as leading actors in the company. And so, you know, it was just very, very lucky, wasn't it, that the people that I got to work with were Ian Richardson, Alan Howard, Patrick Stewart, Ben Kingsley. I mean, all these young actors who then went on to define their generation. It was a hit. It was a gigantic hit.

Presenter21:25

And it was a hit.

Sir Trevor Nunn21:28

Um against all of them.

Presenter21:29

This was mid-60s, you'd have been mid-20s, and a couple of years later you were running the place, the RSC, as we shall hear. But let's pause for some more music, record number five.

Sir Trevor Nunn21:38

I suppose, appropriately enough, the next record that I must have with me is music by the composer Guy Wolfenden for the whole of the time that I ran the company.

Sir Trevor Nunn21:52

Guy was head of music and so I would like to hear Guy Wolfenden's music Gallimorphory.

Presenter22:56

Part of the sweet Gallimorphry played by the Royal Northern College Wind Orchestra and written and conducted by Guy Wolfenden. You spent twenty-two years, I think, all up at the RSC, Trevor. Any number of high points there, from early on casting Judy Dench as both Perdita and Hermione and the Winter's Tale, or and indeed Janet Sussman, who became your first wife as Cleopatra, all very memorable. And that spectacular eight-hour two-nighter production of Nicholas Nickleby. You're not a man who knew about the phenomenon of time off of holiday.

Sir Trevor Nunn23:21

Yeah.

Presenter23:28

Um why why do you think you've been so driven in all of it?

Sir Trevor Nunn23:32

I recognized that doing both jobs, I mean being.

Sir Trevor Nunn23:37

A director of plays and therefore leading the company from the rehearsal room floor, but also being an administrator and having to plan a very complex operation in Stratford and a very complex operation in London and the Hundred Mile Gap, time off was not really an option. And so if I was going to do it, I really had to commit myself to that kind of urgency and density of work.

Presenter24:05

But it did take its toll. You collapsed once. I mean you

Sir Trevor Nunn24:07

I don't know how bad the

Presenter24:08

I don't know how bad the breakdown was, but it was big, wasn't it?

Sir Trevor Nunn24:11

It was when I did, um

Sir Trevor Nunn24:13

All the productions in one season to bring together the four Shakespeare Roman plays into one concept. And we did very, very successfully. And then we televised the production of Antony and Cleopatra from that season, which was also a very happy event. But I then had to go straight on and transfer all of those productions into the Aldrich Theatre. And it was halfway through the technical period of the last one.

Sir Trevor Nunn24:44

Uh where I was sleeping in the theatre.

Presenter24:47

You were in your early thirties, I think, that's all.

Sir Trevor Nunn24:48

I think that's all.

Sir Trevor Nunn24:50

Feeling like I was 108. And it was around about then that it was decided that I should be gently persuaded to go home and not come back for a while.

Presenter25:00

How how bad was it though? I mean did you

Sir Trevor Nunn25:00

How bad was it, though? I mean, did you have a exhaustion? I wouldn't say it was complete. It was absolute exhaustion.

Presenter25:02

Was it a complete function?

Sir Trevor Nunn25:08

It was just a very, very important lesson. And my colleagues.

Presenter25:11

But it's not one you learned, is it? I mean you

Sir Trevor Nunn25:13

Well, my colleagues were hugely supportive, and they helped me through it and continued to believe that.

Presenter25:14

My colleague.

Presenter25:20

How much holiday did you take last year?

Sir Trevor Nunn25:22

Last year I took one week and and um that's why I promised to Imogen that I would do the National Theatre for five years, it's almost six but then I would put that finishing line on it and then we would have a much more relaxed time.

Presenter25:36

But that is the conundrum.

Presenter25:39

It's the conundrum, isn't it? Because you want to do the directing, you want to be hands-on because that's really what you do, but in order to give yourself the freedom as director, you need to be the boss, because you don't want somebody else telling you what you can and can't direct.

Sir Trevor Nunn25:51

I think it's terribly important that for the big theatre organisations the leadership is artistic, but that artistic director has got to have a great deal of administrative skill and nas and flexibility.

Presenter25:51

By the

Presenter26:06

And it takes its toll. On the family, not least, as you say. Record number six.

Sir Trevor Nunn26:08

Mm

Sir Trevor Nunn26:11

Well, record number six is the very thing that you started talking about at at the beginning. It's a recording of memory.

Presenter26:13

Uh

Sir Trevor Nunn26:22

None of us could have predicted what happened. Of course it it changed the lives of all of the creative people involved with it. I I would want to be reminded of that very important strand of of my work and all of those relationships. So, memory.

Speaker 426:40

Not a sound from the pave.

Speaker 426:45

Has the moon lost her memory?

Speaker 426:49

She is smiling a lot.

Speaker 426:56

And the street plant gardens, and soon it will be more name.

Presenter27:08

Memory from the Musical Cat, sung by Lane Page, lyrics by my castaway, Trevor Nunn. Apart from the Lloyd Webber Musicals you mentioned, Trevor, at the National as Artistic Director for the last five, going on six years, you've produced um directed Oklahoma, My Fair Lady, South Pacific.

Presenter27:26

Your critics, as you know, make quite a harsh charge that you're making a a personal fortune, as it were, because when these things transfer out to the West End or to Broadway from the box office of these things, which you created when you were paid by the National Theatre. What's your answer to that charge?

Sir Trevor Nunn27:42

Uh it's completely erroneous. Um I have personally earned absolutely nothing whatsoever from the musicals that I've transferred. I've given absolutely every cent of it to the National Teeth. That's a personal decision of mine.

Presenter27:55

But you do get it, but contractually you get it. What you do with it after that is.

Sir Trevor Nunn27:57

Yeah.

Sir Trevor Nunn27:59

Exactly. And there's a long tradition of work that begins in the subsidised sector that is then recognised to have some sort of commercial value. And then for the actors involved, the lighting designers, the musical people involved, and so on, there is a dividend for them when it becomes a commercial enterprise. For an artistic director, of course, there's a moral problem that the artistic director has chosen the piece of work in the first place and therefore, if he's the director of it, has chosen himself to be in that position, therefore the possibility of gaining from it. There's an absolutely clear custom and practice, and it's never really varied.

Presenter28:22

So if you get, as it were.

Presenter28:30

So

Presenter28:44

What that you do get that money, that you do have a right to say five percent of the box office in my fair lady.

Sir Trevor Nunn28:46

But a commercial arrangement can be made.

Presenter28:52

But are you saying then that you have taken that money and put it all back into productions at the national?

Sir Trevor Nunn28:57

Absolutely every cent of it. That that's a choice of mine and I wouldn't want that.

Sir Trevor Nunn29:02

to be any kind of imperative to influence anybody else.

Presenter29:07

For your successor. No, obviously. But but but I wonder when you I mean you must have done that anonymously. Why haven't you published a statement of what you've done and got your critics off your back?

Sir Trevor Nunn29:08

But but

Sir Trevor Nunn29:18

Because I I don't think it's uh anybody's b business and I I I wouldn't want to make a a fuss or a palaver about that. But yes, I have done it. Um uh

Presenter29:27

Are there productions that have gone on at the National in the past few years that would not have seen the light of day if you hadn't backed them?

Sir Trevor Nunn29:33

Some experimental work has had to find support and I've been able to contribute, yes.

Presenter29:39

Hmm.

Presenter29:41

I don't know why you're so coy about it.

Presenter29:44

I would

Sir Trevor Nunn29:44

I didn't say coy, but I I d I I am private about it, and I'd prefer to be.

Presenter29:49

But essentially you're saying you've got enough, you've made enough over the years from most particularly memory.

Sir Trevor Nunn29:53

Yes.

Sir Trevor Nunn29:55

Um

Presenter29:56

Um

Sir Trevor Nunn29:57

Yes. I mean, going into the job at the National Theatre, I thought it was important that I should give something back in a number of different ways. It was very necessary for there to be a holding operation until the next generation was ready to take over.

Presenter30:14

But interestingly, of course, the next generation have done other things. Sam Mendis, Stephen Dawkins, but yes, but they've now gone to Hollywood. That seems to be the thing, doesn't it? Whether it's American Beauty or Billy Elliott or Road to Perdition.

Sir Trevor Nunn30:19

And then does Stephen talk about

Presenter30:28

They have now become Hollywood directors, so you thought you were holding, as it were, but in fact they shot off in different directions.

Sir Trevor Nunn30:32

Really happy about what's happened at the National. My successor is Nick Heitner. And I've known him.

Presenter30:41

I'm not suggesting for one moment second best, not at all, but it's interesting that the course of the next generation and the generation after them are shooting in very different directions now, aren't they?

Sir Trevor Nunn30:51

In every age there is a going form, and clearly at the end of the twentieth century, the beginning of the twenty first century, cinema is the going form.

Presenter31:00

Do you wish it had been when you were a young man?

Sir Trevor Nunn31:02

My first love was the theatre, so no I don I don't feel oh, if only or I wish I had taken a different course. However, I have hugely enjoyed the film work that I've done. I I very much hope that I'll make one more film before I hang up my clogs.

Presenter31:20

Record number seven.

Sir Trevor Nunn31:21

Again, appropriately enough, the next piece of music that I must have is by the composer Sean Davie, who wrote the score for my film of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Sean is an Irish composer who extraordinarily combines Celtic and Gaelic influence with a wonderful ability to orchestrate in the Western tradition. He wrote a piece called The Dairy Symphony. That's what I would like to take with me.

Presenter32:46

Part of the last movement of the Dairy Symphony by Shawn Davy, played by the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Garroit Grant.

Presenter32:53

So to a desert island, Trevenan, a bit of enforced rest here, lying down. Um did you inherit any of your father's skills with his hands?

Sir Trevor Nunn33:01

Um

Presenter33:02

No, I can't.

Sir Trevor Nunn33:03

I would imagine most people that know me would say definitely not. Now, I'm not totally impractical. I observed him a lot. You know, I know how to joint wood together. Yeah, so I I would know how to make a structure if there were any implements at all.

Speaker 433:15

Uh

Presenter33:15

You're a dovetail man, eh?

Sir Trevor Nunn33:22

And can you cook? Yes, I do cook. I am the cook of our family. So yes, I'd be okay at that. I mean, you know, it wouldn't be elaborate. It w I wouldn't call it cuisine. But on a desert island who's after cuisine. No, I'd I I could survive perfectly well.

Presenter33:35

But it's different.

Presenter33:38

Yeah.

Presenter33:38

Next.

Presenter33:41

And you talk to yourself?

Sir Trevor Nunn33:43

I talk to myself a lot, I always have, so I'd probably be okay in terms of keeping myself company.

Presenter33:51

Last record.

Sir Trevor Nunn33:53

Over the last couple of years, I've worked on pieces in the theatre that concerned the Holocaust. And so the last piece of music that I want with me is the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. But it was recorded within the walls of the concentration camp at Maathausen. It was a symbol of endurance, of our abiding knowledge that however slowly the human species does get better. And I think I would want the comfort of that knowledge.

Speaker 434:34

We please and I lost one in my lips and for anyone I never fight that place in

Presenter35:31

Part of the last movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony, The Ode to Joy, and that was recorded at a memorial concert at Mauthausen in the year two thousand with the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Simon Rattle. Now, Trevor, if you could only take one of those eight records. Which one would you take?

Sir Trevor Nunn35:47

I would take Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, it's a masterpiece that sits at a level beyond most masterpieces.

Presenter35:55

And your book you've got the Bible, and of course the complete works of Shakespeare.

Sir Trevor Nunn35:59

It's almost impossible this, isn't it? But I think I'd want the complete works of Charles Dickens. You can live through the the the m multiplicity of character and foible and and behaviour and and you always end up by believing in humankind.

Presenter36:17

And your luxury.

Sir Trevor Nunn36:18

I would want one photograph of my wife and all the children. I would want on a daily basis to be able to say this is what I am trying to survive for. I could be comforted by the knowledge of the continued existence of the people I most believe in.

Presenter36:40

Sir Trevor Nunn, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Sir Trevor Nunn36:43

My pleasure.

Speaker 336:51

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.